Barbara sat by herself for a few minutes and then rang for her maid and began to undress. She had never dreamed that Jack would not answer her letter. Though written on the night after she had failed to find him at the Temple, she had kept it locked away for nearly two months, afraid to send it and unable to say why she was afraid. Then Sonia Dainton had called on her and, standing by the window with her face averted, had talked of Jim's approaching marriage. "I hear he's going out to the front fairly soon," she began. "I want to part friends with him—in case anything happens. D'you think he'd see me?" "You can only try," answered Barbara. That was a fortnight ago; some weeks later, on the eve of the wedding, Sonia called at Loring House to beg and to receive forgiveness. In the meantime Barbara profited by her own advice to force herself into communication with Jack. It was all that she could do, if she hoped ever again to know self-respect or even a quiet conscience. She could make amends and give him his chance to embrace or spurn her; that he would ignore her she had never imagined.
The hospital at the Abbey opened three days after her conversation with Jim; and Barbara at once volunteered for night work. Ever since the party at Chepstow she had been unable to rest; Jack's haggard face and fixed stare invaded her dreams, and, when she slept, it was to wake up repeating some phrase that she had used to him. By going to bed in daylight and lying with the blinds up and the sun on her face, she never wholly lost consciousness; her brain was sentinel enough to rouse her, if she began to dream of the banqueting-hall at Loring Castle....
When Jim's wedding took place, she wrote to offer him good wishes and added in a postscript:
"I have had no news."
He wrote back,
"I have not seen him since that night. In a case like this, isn't silence itself an answer? George heard that he was possibly going out with a draft, but I believe this has been contradicted. Is there anything I can do? I'll try to get hold of him, if you like, and ask him what he's up to, but, while I don't mind exposing myself to a rebuff, I don't see myself leading you by the hand to have your face slapped by any one...."
"Thanks, it's best to do nothing," Barbara answered. "I should be hurt if he thought I was forcing myself on him."
At the beginning of 1915 Jim wrote on his own initiative.
"I hear Jack's gone abroad. George is my authority; I didn't see him myself. I think you may feel that this squares the account. On the whole I'm glad; and, if you feel as you did when last we discussed this, it's the best thing for you."
A few weeks later Jim went abroad himself. So long as he was a channel of communication, Barbara waved away the necessity of deciding what to do if she were left with what he called a "cheque drawn but not presented." Without him, loneliness sapped her courage; and she wrote three extravagant letters, which, in the act of writing, she knew that she would never send. Then she tried to forget. Then she centred her hopes on seeing him, when he came home on leave....